OSO philosophy and a practical example

ORIGINAL SOUNDS ONLY

OSO, originalsoundsonly.com is a promise, a sort of mission with some historical and experimental purposes, while at the same time, a good excuse to having fun!

The idea is to make music of the more recent genres, using sounds created for that track, only. When possible, using vintage or rare sound generators and avoiding the use of pre-cooked sound libraries. At the same time, its duty is to inform and show that analog synths and vintage equipment, all have a very unique sound and personality, to the point that any machine, even of the same exact model, can have a slightly different sound. (this valid until some time ago, when components tolerances were not so tight). It also encourages playing real or virtual synths, for their capabilities in editing and personalize tracks sounds, instead of using samples too much.

..SORRY, BUT WHY??

Why not using sound libraries? O_o

The idea can sound a bit silly, for sure. Why complicating things when they can be done easily?
The OSO project started with the idea of reporting the fact that, sound libraries, (especially pre recorded playback tracks) are making tracks too much uniform and similar one to the other. DAWs of today, are so powerful and equipped with all kind of juicy virtual synths, that the variations could be infinite. Instead, we are listening to the same lead or same bass sounds, again and again, taken from the same sources.
It’s true that styles in dance music have always been pretty rigid, this surely imposed by the market, as labels try to obtain maximum profits, while risking the less as possible. At the same time, it’s pretty obvious that real hits, have always had something original, different and unique in sound, creating a pulling effect on the market, with the production of several tunes done on the same style, until the wave of success has lost its energy.
Today producers have way much more powerful tools than in the past and I believe much more freedom. Public has a wider taste regarding music genres. The free access to any kind of music through internet, has helped in discovering new styles and sounds, before only reserved to tiny groups of specialists, making not too popular styles, less difficult to digest.

It would be great to see more producers interested in creating something really new, in all of its aspects, soon.
This starting from the foundations tracks are created from: New sounds, new waveforms to all!
The recent introduction in the market of inexpensive analog synths and the return of certain electronic music styles, I hope will help.

ANALOG SYNTHS ADVANTAGES

(not to be taken too seriously)

They smell nicer and the toxic plastics fumes of their components are probably addictive, explaining the unreasonable attraction

They heat you up physically, not only musically. A room full of vintage synths doesn’t need any heater

They are beautiful to the eyes

They improve the acoustics of an empty room

They make rich your technician

OSOization

Here a practical example of a OSO treatment done recently:
Captured on Sunday, was born as an exercise to learn some Trap techniques. It then developed in a complete song, but all its rhythmic components, orchestral and several synth parts, were done using Reason’s internal modules and just a few tracks were from real synths.

As the track was one of the first I posted on Soundcloud, it wasn’t listened very much, as Í had very few listeners at the beginning. It then remained submerged under a pile of newer tunes, in a difficult position to get noticed.
To give it some new interest and make it similar to the other tracks, I decided to “OSOize” it and this is the result:

The program I used for this project is Reason 8. Of its internal sound libraries, I still had to use the orchestral parts, as reproducing each instrument with my analog synths would have been a too complicated task, considering the complexity of the arrangements. Piano sounds for the NN-XT sampler, were chosen too, as I wanted an authentic sounding piano.

Special guests in this project are a vintage mini modular Korg MS-50 and its analog sequencer brother, SQ-10. For the drums, I’ve used my old 12 bits Korg DDD-1, playing it live from the pads, on separate takes. The Zombie Polaris is present too, with the lead line at the beginning. Crumar Spirit and Waldorf Pulse, were present already in the first version and kept untouched. The triad chords right after the intro are played with the last one, splitting the oscillators to the chord’s notes pitch.